The theater department is putting on Tony Kushner’s “A Bright Room Called Day,” and will be directed by graduate student Jamie Warrow.
Warrow prefers a play that has a message, which is why she pitched “A Bright Room Called Day.”
Holly Derr, the Artistic Director for the Department of Theater and Dance, helped pick out the lineup for the upcoming season. For each school year, the theater and dance department roughly has about seven to eight productions. In the early stages of the pandemic, the department was only able to host six shows.
Derr says that when picking the lineup for the upcoming season, the board considers how each proposed composition meets the needs of the student’s.
“A Bright Room Called Day” is set in 1930’s Berlin, and follows a group of young, idealistic friends as the Weimar Republic falls to fascism and the control of Nazis. Over the course of the play, the friends will be forced to pick between their ideals and fight the tense political landscape, or inaction and silence.
“Tony Kushner’s plays are more interesting, I think, because he tends to examine what can happen to a society if they don’t act,” said Warrow.
Written in 1985, the play draws parallels between the fall of democracy the Weimar Republic faced with the decisions the Reagan administration made. Warrow, however, thinks parallels can be made from the play to today's current political climate.
“I want the audience to draw the parallels and ask themselves, are there circumstances happening now that also happened in Bright Room,” said Warrow.
According to Warrow, the main character’s inaction leads her to be isolated, and under a new fascist regime.
“Bright Room” is a cautionary, call to action story about speaking up when you see something that is wrong, even if it doesn’t affect you, because silence can be a slippery slope.
Admission to see “A Bright Room Called Day” is free for students and is being held at the Mainstage Theater.
The first showings were on Feb. 24-26, at 7:30, with more showings in early March.
While “Bright Day” takes place in 1932, the story is often “interpreted” by a woman named Zillah, an American woman, who is angry at the cruelties of the Reagan administration in the 1980’s.
